


The Things He Carried

by Shearmouth



Series: (Beats back Writer's Block with a Stick) Whumptober 2020! [7]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Ed is just trauma daddy issues and tacky taste rolled into a red coat, Gen, Hurt Edward Elric, I cannot be stopped with writing Papa Roy, Parental Roy Mustang, Pneumonia, Sickfic, Whumptober 2020, but secretly he be like, when it comes to Mustang, you are my daaad you're my dad! boogie woogie woogie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-07
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:49:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26877718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shearmouth/pseuds/Shearmouth
Summary: For Whumptober Day 7: Support and CarryingRoy is used to townspeople calling to complain about Fullmetal cussing out authorities or blowing things up.He never thought he'd wish for those calls, but he is after the one he received this morning.
Relationships: Edward Elric & Roy Mustang
Series: (Beats back Writer's Block with a Stick) Whumptober 2020! [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947829
Comments: 30
Kudos: 399
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	The Things He Carried

**Author's Note:**

> *throws more Parental Roy content at the Internet and runs away*

The town smelled like mud. That was what Roy noticed first. The backwater villages of the East could be quaint, charming even, but more often they were small and smelly and desperate. Rinkevel was firmly in the latter category.

Roy stepped carefully over a large puddle and scanned the sides of the main street. He noticed a face or two peeking out from behind threadbare curtains, hostile gazes brushing his before disappearing into the darkness behind them. Roy let his professionally blank expression hide his edginess.

He didn’t like it here. And he didn’t like why he was here.

When the Fair Folly Inn came into view after Roy rounded a corner, he tried not to let the relief show on his face. The sooner he got in, the sooner he could get out and leave this creepy, watchful place.

He neglected to scrape his boots before entering. The interior was dim and smoky. An older man with ferrety eyes hunched behind the reception. He took Roy in with open disdain, gaze scraping over his uniform and gloves.

“Can I help you, _sir?”_ he sneered.

Roy ignored it. He’d expected the chilly reception.

Maybe he should’ve expected worse, or he wouldn’t be here at all.

“I’m here for my subordinate,” Roy said coolly. “You placed a call to my office this morning asking us to retrieve him.”

“Finally,” the innkeeper spat. “Took you long enough. Hope for your sake he’s still breathing.” 

“I need his room number.” Roy said through clamped molars, tamping down on the dread in his stomach.

“Second floor at the end of the hall.” The innkeeper waved vaguely toward the stairs. “Get him out of here before he dies and starts to stink up the place.”

 _That’s a lost cause,_ Roy wanted to say, but instead he gritted out a thank you and made for the stairs.

The stairs creaked loudly as Roy made for the next floor, like the building itself was protesting his presence. This was hardly his first time in an anti-military town. But something about this place put him badly on edge.

The room at the end of the hall seemed to lie at the back of a gullet. He knocked lightly on the stained wood. “Fullmetal?”

He waited a few beats, and his feeble hope the situation wasn’t as dire as he feared petered out. He shouldered open the door and walked in.

The scents of sickness hit him first– sweat and stress and stale air. The curtains were drawn, but enough light crept in from the streetlights outside to wash the room in fuzzy photonegatives. Roy’s gaze swept over the open suitcase vomiting its contents on the floor, the small desk that was covered in loose papers. A narrow bed was shoved into the far corner like it was hiding from something. On it was a familiar small figure, curled against the wall under a drift of blankets.

The dread deepened. Roy flicked the lights on. Ed didn’t stir.

“Fullmetal?” Roy crossed the room warily. His traumatized subordinate could startle from sleep more violently than some seasoned veterans. But even as Roy came close with deliberately loud footsteps, bracing for a yelp and a flying metal fist, Ed stayed utterly still, but for the uneven rise and fall of his ribcage. “Fullmetal, can you hear me?”

When he again received no answer, Roy gently rolled Ed over onto his back.

And promptly bit back the urge to torch the innkeeper where he stood for not calling him sooner.

Ed was pale as a sheet and drenched in sweat. His shut eyes looked bruised and sunken, and when he inhaled, Roy winced at the audible rattle in his lungs. Roy knelt and placed a careful hand against Ed’s carotid. A thready pulse galloped under burning skin.

Roy was no doctor, but he knew pneumonia when he saw it. And given Ed’s size, missing limbs, and the fact that he tended to push well past healthy limits in almost every aspect of his life, this had become a very dangerous case. 

Two days. Ed had been like this for at least two days, according to the innkeeper. That was when Ed was last seen going up to his room. Roy swallowed the bile rising in his throat.

He shook Ed’s flesh shoulder. “Fullmetal?”

Ed groaned and shifted. His eyelids fluttered.

Hope surged in Roy’s chest. “Come on Fullmetal, wake up. What have I told you about sleeping on the job?”

Ed blinked slowly. His eyes were bright with fever-haze and seemed to focus on nothing. They skimmed over Roy’s face before narrowing in confusion. “Colonel?”

Roy hid a wince. Ed sounded like he’d been gargling glass. “Yeah, kid, it’s me.”

“Colonel… don’t feel right,” Ed rasped. He brought his automail hand up to rub at his sternum where, Roy noted with dismay, a livid bruise had formed. He gently moved Ed’s hand away. He reflexively squeezed the metal hand, remembering distantly that Ed wouldn’t be able to feel it. 

The floorboards creaked behind him. Roy stood and whirled.

The innkeeper leaned against the doorframe, looking over at Ed with barely hidden disgust. “He dead?”

Roy’s grip on his temper slipped. “Why the hell didn’t you call a doctor?” he snarled.

The innkeeper bristled. “Not my job to babysit him,” he spat. “He only paid through last night. He showed me his watch when he came in, so I called your people. Someone still needs to pay me for today’s fee.”

Roy clenched his fists. If he incinerated the innkeeper, it would not end well. But God, he wanted to burn this whole shitty place to the ground. “What are you owed?” he asked icily.

“Six thousand.”

Roy dug the cenz out of his greatcoat and slapped them into the innkeeper’s hand. “Thank you for your hospitality,” Roy hissed, making no attempt to hide the sarcasm.

The innkeeper flashed a rictus grin. “God save our military,” he muttered before giving a mocking salute and disappearing.

Roy wanted to give chase and punch him through the nearest window. Fuck the paperwork, and the lecture Hawkeye was sure to give him. Military or not, State Alchemist or not, Edward was still just a kid. And though he masked his ethics meticulously– open sentiment was a critical hindrance for upward mobility in command– Roy couldn’t help but hate anyone who looked at a fourteen-year-old choking on his own phlegm and did nothing but sneer. 

Ed groaned, whimpered. Roy’s ire evaporated. He knelt again, brushing Ed’s sweaty bangs away from his eyes. Ed pressed into his hand, tension seeping from his body with a sigh. Roy smiled sadly. In health Ed was all brash kinesis, jabbing insults at Mustang as easily as breathing. In the two years Ed had been his subordinate, they’d built an odd friendship which, to the outside eye, would seem shockingly disrespectful.

But Roy knew Ed’s barbs and bluster were all a front. He knew, because whenever Ed became gravely sick or injured his prickly walls fell away, and Roy got a glimpse at the damaged teenager Ed hid from the rest of the world.

They never spoke of that time when Ed got poisoned on a mission in East City and spent the hospitalized night crying into Roy’s chest when the hallucinations became too vicious. Or when he fell asleep on Roy’s office couch one afternoon after a bout of insomnia, and Roy woke him from a nightmare and held him against his side until Ed’s breathing calmed down. Roy never brought up the many other times Ed got badly hurt, and accepted comfort from the man who he claimed to loathe so virulently. He knew Ed remembered them. But Roy knew somehow that Ed’s desire for support, and Roy’s surprising willingness to give it, was something that had to remain unnamed, or the pride and pain in both of them would taint it beyond repair.

Roy tapped his thumb gently against Ed’s brow. “Hey, Fullmetal.”

Ed blinked slowly and raised his eyebrows.

“You ready to get out of here?” Roy asked. “Alphonse has been worried. He’s waiting to see you.” Roy wished again that Alphonse had been able to come with Ed on this accursed mission– Edward was brilliant, but in every direction, and his younger brother kept him grounded like no other. Maybe he could’ve helped keep it from getting this bad. But the subtle nature of this mission had called for only Edward to go.

Ed blinked slowly. He was likely on the verge of delirium, but the gears seemed to be turning. At length he nodded, and whispered a hoarse, “Yeah.” 

Roy nodded. “Okay, give me a minute.” He strode quickly around the room, gathering Ed’s loose articles and tossing them into the battered suitcase.

When he returned to the bedside, Ed’s eyes had slid shut again. Roy knelt and slipped his arm around Ed’s back, then shoved off the rest of the blankets. Ed was in his normal clothes, even his boots, and Roy was suddenly hit with another burst of the scent of sickness.

Roy braced himself, then lifted Ed up against his chest. The weight of the automail made him grunt. Ed moaned unhappily, and he hacked out a series of heavy coughs that squeezed tears from his clamped-shut eyes. Roy shifted so Ed’s head and chest were elevated and rubbed his knuckles softly over his subordinate’s heaving sternum.

“It’s okay, Fullmetal,” Roy murmured. “Ride it out. I’ve got you.”

Gradually, the hacking tapered off, leaving Ed boneless. His head rolled against Roy’s bicep, and his long, unbraided hair was lank with sweat. Roy draped the bright mane over his forearm in an attempt not to yank it. Ed let out a gusty breath and curled into Roy’s chest, metal fingers finding the lapels of his uniform.

“You’re like a baby squirrel, you know that?” Roy smirked, as he lifted the suitcase into the hand holding Ed’s knees and made for the door.

“…’m not… a squirrel,” Ed muttered. “Shut up…bas’ard…” But even as he muttered the irritated jab, he pressed a little closer to Roy’s chest and buried his face in his shirt.

Roy squeezed him gently and started for home.


End file.
